I Smell Trouble™, a New Fragrance for Men Call me alarmist, but the idea of my friend dissolving into nothing seemed like a pretty big deal to me.
I expressed this in my usual calm way.
“WHAT?!” I shouted, and made the nearest fire hydrant explode (accidentally, mind you). The top of the hydrant shot into the air like a billionaire’s rocket, somersaulted a few times, and landed in the middle of Eighth Street.
“Grover—”
“I know.”
“Do you?” I paced back and forth, trying to contain my horror. A manhole cover by my foot blew open. “How could you? Why?”
“Can you sit down before you destroy any more city property?”
I paced back and forth a few more times before I was composed enough to join him on the bench. By then he had finished his cheesecake and both ice teas, because he eats when he’s nervous, or when he’s not nervous, or just when there’s food in the vicinity.
“Look, Percy …” He started picking at his fingers. His nails were more ragged than I’d noticed in a while. His goatee quivered. “I feel so bad about Hecate’s place …. I’m responsible.”
“Dude. You’re not.”
He gave me the sad eyes, the trembling lower lip. We could have been right back in sixth grade, when he used to hide at the back table of the cafeteria after getting bullied by the other kids at Yancy Academy.
“Except … maybe I am,” he said. “I was thinking Monday night, before everything went wrong … if you get this letter of recommendation, there’ll only be one more to go. Then you’ll be ready for college. And you and Annabeth will be gone. And I’ll … I’ll still be here.”
That hit me like a fastball in the stomach. All the anger got knocked right out of me, leaving nothing but guilt.
“Grover. Ah, man, we’d never leave you leave you. You can come out to stay anytime. And we’ll be back.”
He sniffled. “I know. It’s just … I hate it. I’ll miss you two. And it’s selfish, so I haven’t said anything. I want to help. I really do. But part of me
wonders … maybe that’s why I drank that strawberry potion.
Subconsciously, maybe, but still … just to sabotage things. What if I did that? I couldn’t live with myself.”
I counted to five. I didn’t want to jump in too fast, because I got the feeling another denial wouldn’t help and I’d just end up flipping more manhole covers.
“We should’ve talked about this before now,” I said. “That’s on me. I should’ve realized how hard this has been on you, man.”
He wiped a tear from his cheek. “It’s not your fault.”
“Don’t do that,” I said, gently as I could. “Don’t brush it away.” “The tear?”
“No, dude, the importance of what you’re telling me. Look, I don’t know what happened with the strawberry potion. I don’t know if Hecate was setting you up to fail or what. But I do know that nothing on earth is worth losing my best friend. We’ll figure this out. Just please, no more grounding yourself. I’m the one who should be apologizing. I should have been thinking about how you felt rather than stressing about getting into
college.”
He sniffled. “Well … you should stress about college a little.” “Thanks, man.”
“Because I’ve seen your GPA.”
“Just come here.” I wrapped him in a hug. He smelled like dirt, dried leaves, and probably squirrels and an adopted rat named Eustis, but fortunately my nose wasn’t that good. “Promise me no more grounding.”
He nodded. “It … it was kinda cool, though, right?” “Very impressive,” I said. “And terrifying.”
“Okay. Annabeth is going to kill me, isn’t she?”
We didn’t even discuss not telling her, because that was a recipe for disaster.
“She might kill you a little,” I agreed. “But in a loving, caring way. And she’ll tell you the same thing I did. Nothing is worth losing you. You are always going to be with us, even if we’re temporarily living on different coasts.”
His smile started to crumble. I was afraid I’d made him sad again, but then his eyes brightened like he’d realized something important.
“Different coasts!” he said. “The squirrels said something about the coast
….”
“Like, the squirrels are from California?”
“No. They said … It’s hard to translate. They said the polecat was last seen with four spirits from beyond the coast. Something like that.”
“You just remembered this?”
He frowned. I was glad to see him annoyed with me, because that was better than him being sad and wanting to dissolve into dirt. “No, Percy, but I’ve never grounded myself before. It’s a little hard to hear the voices of everything alive in Manhattan all at once. I’m surprised I could even pick out the idea Lafayette Street.”
“That’s fair. So, these four spirits … any ideas?”
“It—it doesn’t exactly make sense. Usually, to a squirrel, a spirit from beyond the coast would mean a naiad, a water spirit, but we’re not going anywhere near a natural body of water.”
I sat up a little straighter. “Well, my school’s not very close to the water, and I’ve got a Nereid from the deep sea as my guidance counselor. At least, I did before she disappeared on me. If there are naiads involved, that’s good, right? Water is kind of my thing.”
“I mean, yeah, I hadn’t thought of that.”
I patted him on the shoulder. “Come on, Cloven Elder. You may have just saved the day.”
As we started down Lafayette Street again, I was in a much better mood.
My friend wasn’t turning into dirt. We had a solid lead on finding Gale. And Grover seemed to enjoy being called Cloven Elder. My thoughts started rambling, as they do. I wondered if I should call him CE for short. Did that mean before he became a Cloven Elder he was Grover BCE?
This is how my mind works. Welcome to the chaos.
We took our time, partly because Grover was still shaky from his communion with nature. Also, I was trying to stay alert for anything water- spirity in our vicinity. I got nothing except a vague sense that my bladder was full, which wasn’t helpful.
We crossed Houston Street. As we made our way through Nolita, I got the usual tingle of agitation I felt whenever I headed to this part of downtown. The buildings were too low, the sky too open, the streets no longer on a nice simple grid. I felt like the parts of Manhattan I knew best—
Uptown, Midtown—had run away to hide like the citizens of some Wild West town right before the big gunfight at high noon.
On the corner of Jersey Street, we passed our first perfume shop. The smells wafting out made my eyes water, as if millions of flower bouquets were crying out in terror all at once. The next block had three more perfume shops. The pedestrians walking down the street even smelled perfumy, like they’d been browsing the stores and getting spritzed with free samples.
Grover sneezed.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “What’s with all the smelly stuff?”
“This area has the highest concentration of perfume shops in the world,” he said. “I try not to come down here because it kills my sinuses.”
I stopped. “Fragrances.”
Grover’s eyes widened. “And we’re searching for Gale, the smelliest polecat in the world. That can’t be a coincidence. You think she’s hiding down here to camouflage her scent?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. But what do naiads have to do with it?”
Grover had no answers, and I wasn’t going to let him summon an army of squirrels to find out. Instead, we kept going, paying more attention to the perfume shops.
Once you noticed them, you couldn’t unsee them. They were everywhere, like the gold and jewelry businesses along East 47th Street. It never made sense to me why all the shops for a single commodity would be crammed
together like that. Wouldn’t you get gold fatigue looking at so many jewelry places at once? Wouldn’t your nose fall off if you tried to sniff all these different perfumes in one trip? Then again, I’d never understood how
anyone could operate any business in Manhattan without going broke. I mentally crossed off open a surf shop from my list of potential future careers.
Another block, and I froze. Across the street stood yet another perfumery.
This one’s doorway was gold-plated and decorated with Greek key patterns, which seemed like a clue that something magical and Greek might be going on inside. The windows were filled with colored vials of every size and
shape and a big water fixture that bubbled liquids through pipes. Dry ice smoked from a large cauldron. Maybe it was their Halloween display? Or maybe it was like that all the time. The name of the place glittered in pearly white over the door: AEAEA. I guess they’d spent all their money on the
storefront decorations and hadn’t been able to afford any consonants for their sign.
“What is it?” Grover asked.
“Not sure,” I said. “The name of that place mean anything to you?”
Grover tried to pronounce it. “It looks like something Hephaestus might scream when he drops a hammer on his foot.”
I really hoped Hephaestus hadn’t heard Grover’s comment, because we didn’t need another god mad at us.
“Something feels … off,” I said.
Then I noticed the woman behind the sales counter, talking with a customer. She looked like a typical salesperson in a high-end store. She wore an elegant deep blue dress and gold dangle earrings. Her dark hair was cut in a kind of Cleopatra-style wedge. She smiled at her customer coolly, all aloof and fashionable, like she was sending the message Buy my products, and
maybe you’ll look as beautiful as I do.
Something about her was familiar … like we were standing in the same river, the current running straight from her to me.
“She’s a naiad,” I said.
Grover nodded. “You’re right. I can sense it now. Wow, you’re good.” “What do we do now? Go ask nicely if she’s seen a farting polecat?”
“If you can sense her,” Grover said, stepping back, “do you think she can sense you?”
I wished he hadn’t said that. I think it made me send out extra sea-god-kid radiation or something. The lady turned and looked out the window as if she’d heard somebody call her name.
Our eyes locked. Her face turned into a mask of pure hatred. She said something to her client—probably Excuse me, I have to kill someone. Then she snatched up a few perfume samples and marched straight toward us.
